Format: PlayStation
Release: 1998
Publisher: Infogames
Developer: Reflections

Towards the end of its life, it became fashionable to denigrate the PlayStation. To claim its incredible success owed more to the Sony publicity machine than the quality of the software. To bemoan the wannabe-cinematic formula of cutscenes, glitchy 3D and poorly selected camera angles that characterised so many mediocre titles released in the console’s latter years.

Yet the PlayStation wasn't always a rest home for staid franchises, and there was a time when the term ‘cinematic’ didn’t seem quite so loaded either. Driver is a perfect example. It’s derived from an ancient genre and utilises a simple pick-up-and-play, drive-from-A-to-B mechanic. But add some super-stylised presentation, some ’70s cool, some of that much fabled Sony PlayStation ‘attitude’ and the concept is transformed unrecognisably.
   
Reflections’ founder and MD Martin Edmondson explains the game’s genesis: “The idea for Driver actually came about during the development of Destruction Derby. I was messing about on one of the tracks called ‘Crossroads’, and thought it would be great to make a game that was full of these crossroads and would let the player choose the direction he drove in. This rapidly developed into a ‘car chase’ game, as I had an unhealthy appetite for them as a kid.” However, because Reflections was already contracted to produce Destruction Derby 2, the game’s development was delayed. With unexpectedly positive consequences.
   


At the most base level, the elongated gestation time helped not only to hone Reflections’ PlayStation expertise, but to banish any lingering doubts that Driver would actually be possible on the console. Without that extra time, one of the Sony machine’s flagship titles could have been PC only. “When we initially started hawking the idea around publishers and journalists we showed them a PC version… which gave rise to plenty of doubts about whether the game would actually be possible on PlayStation hardware. A rumour which wasn’t helped when we took a dev kit to E3 to show the PlayStation version to trade, only for it to be destroyed during shipment.”

The extra time proved beneficial from a design perspective too. Having already mastered the PlayStation racer with the impressive Destruction Derby series, the Newcastle-based developer was determined to really push the genre forward. “We decided to do a story-driven racer… we particularly wanted to avoid all the clichés like earning money for jobs, points for running down pedestrians and so on. We also wanted the feeling that you were solving something and hunting a person down. We wanted to enable complete changes of situation – sometimes you’d be blasting down the street and screeching in and out of traffic with cops on your tail; and at other times trying to cruise as unobtrusively as possible.” It pays to remember, that before Driver’s timely reinvigoration of the arcade racer the genre was suffering something of a malaise. Heading down a post Gran Turismo blind alley of airbrushed cars with ever more realistic graphics and, um, ever more realistic handling. Hardly the most diverse future.
   


This dissatisfaction with the state of racing games led Edmondson and his team to draw inspiration almost entirely from TV and the movies. The ’70s setting then, was a result of several factors. Firstly, Edmondson's own personal fondness for the decade, “Personally, I think the ’70s is very interesting in terms of style… modern US vehicles are incredibly dull compared to the classic ’70s muscle cars.” The beautiful thing about the lopsided heavy gas-guzzlers of Driver’s world being that they are so much fun to drive. Because the cars are, by European standards, hopeless, even the gentlest curve threatened to send you spinning into oncoming traffic. While it was also common to slip into slides which could only be driven out of with plenty of opposite lock and throttle application. Then there was the thick smoke of the multiple pile-ups and the hubcaps that pinged off with the slightest encouragement. And the repetitive “suspect heading north” speech. It’s pure theatricality. And perfect for the PlayStation. Revelling in grease, fumes and crisis, Driver was clearly Gran Turismo’s wayward little brother.